Premier Yu Shyi-kun is scheduled to meet Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) this morning to solicit support for calling an extraordinary legislative session to review bills and budget appropriations deemed urgent by the Cabinet.
Topping the Cabinet's list are a NT$17.2 billion (US$511 million) budget request for disaster relief stemming from Tropical Storm Mindulle; a special budget for the five-year, NT$500 billion 10 New Major Construction Projects; and a special bill and budget for a NT$610.8 billion arms procurement from the US.
According to Cabinet Spokesman Chen Chi-mai (
Damage caused by Mindulle, which killed 25 and injured 16, is estimated to be NT$12.2 billion. Wang has suggested that relief work be included in the 10 New Major Construction Projects.
The legislature passed a bill authorizing the 10 New Major Construction Projects on the last day of the legislative session that ended on June 11. The bill allows the Cabinet to circumvent the nation's public debt ceiling and to make a special budget of up to NT$500 billion for the projects over the next five years.
The Cabinet is prevented, however, from earmarking spending for the 10 projects that is in excess of 50 percent of the annual budget of other major public construction programs being carried out in the same year.
Seeking to amend that article of the statute, the Cabinet is scheduled to approve draft amendments to the special law during Wednesday's weekly Cabinet meeting and later to send the amendments to the extraordinary legislative session for further review.
While Wang has hinted that the NT$610.8 billion special budget for arms purchases would likely be cut by at least NT$100 billion, the pan-blue legislative caucuses have threatened to cut at least NT$200 billion if the eight submarines included in the package are not assembled locally.
Under the Cabinet's plan, China Shipbuilding, a state-run company, will send technicians overseas to observe construction of the first two submarines and learn about the design, production and logistics techniques involved in building the vessels.
The Cabinet hopes the company would then be able to build one-third of the hardware for the third and fourth subs.
For the fifth and sixth subs, the Cabinet hopes the company can build two-thirds of the hardware and then build all of the remaining two.
After meeting with Yu, Wang is slated to conduct a coordination conference between the ruling and the opposition parties at around noon to discuss the best time for the extraordinary session.
The opposition parties have suggested that the session be held over three days starting July 16 to deal with bills such as the structure of the ad hoc investigation committee into the election-eve assassination attempt; the ad hoc investigation committee into the use of the national security mechanism after the shooting; and constitutional amendments.
The DPP caucus, however, prefers to see the session held either between July 19 and 23 or from Aug. 3 to 13 to review 15 pieces of legislation, in particular the budget for the 10 projects.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching